


Rose Quartz and Citrine

by Corvid_Knight



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C (Homestuck), Suicide mention, dirk and hal drama specifically, like he was godtier but still, my tumblr is knight-of-heart-and-art, they're messes, weirdass godtier effects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 17:09:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12822162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Dirk's aspect makes itself apparent in a new and interesting way. He deals with it about as well as can be expected. (hint: this is Dirk. He can't deal with anything.) Luckily there's at least one person who has experience with fixing Dirk's shit when needed.





	Rose Quartz and Citrine

Somehow you never expected to be actively avoiding human contact when you had the opportunity and the desire to not be alone. Then again, up to a certain point in your life you never expected that you'd end up not being more or less alone on a drowning planet, but hey. Shit happens and everything's different now. 

Some things are more different than others. Is that a stupid way to put it? You feel like it is. In your opinion, though, you're in a weird and stupid situation, so whatever stupid statements you make will have to be excused. 

What the fuck are you doing right now, anyway? 

There's a short and mostly-true answer to that question, and it is...nothing. Listening to music turned way too loud, sitting in a tipped-back desk chair with one sleeve of the sweater that it's too warm for pushed up so you can scratch absently at your arm, mesmerized and a little disgusted by the way crystalline streaks radiate out from where you touch and yield to flesh again as your fingers move on. It's a pretty quick fade—you're not the one who can make them stay. Roxy, Dave, Jake, John—the people you care about, their touch leaves your skin branded with translucent pink and gold. It's not really like being branded, though. It doesn't hurt, and it's not just a surface thing, your skin literally changing with some strange alchemy that you can't explain or puzzle out. 

Not that you haven't tried. You've played with the possibilities, spent hours in front of the mirror gingerly tracing your fingers across your arms, face, chest until your skin went translucent and fractured, cracks too fine to feel pulsing with gentle light that fades from amber to magenta and back again in a regular cadence. The beat of your heart, if you want to be specific. And that's what this all comes down to, isn't it—your heart? Or Heart. Your goddamn aspect manifesting again, for what reason you have no idea. 

You don't know if you want to know, really. Your aspect only stirs itself up when it's needed, and that's almost never not meant bad shit. You're semi-okay with using your powers, seldom and cautiously; needing to use them is a whole other story. There's no way that scenario wouldn't be bad. 

At least you figured out something was fucky before anyone else noticed. At least you had enough sense to cut yourself off. Sadly, you still can't figure out how to fix this shit; you've tested a wide variety of possible remedies that all ended up having exactly zero effect. 

Well. 

Other than the hard reset. Self-decapitation had an effect, all right, beyond making you feel stoned for six hours. Just not the one you were hoping for. Precisely the opposite, actually. 

Thinking about that—waking up in the bathroom, pushing yourself off the floor and almost passing out again as you saw the not-quite-broken living crystal statue in the mirror, its eyes shifting coals of flame and its spun-gold hair dishevelled from when your head hit the floor—thinking about that, you dig your nails a bit harder into the skin of your arm, enough to make yourself wince and pull your hand away. It's just a few shallow scrapes on already-irritated skin (you should've stopped scratching a while ago, if you're being honest), but where the skin's broken the crystalline effect spreads out, persisting beyond what's normal. There's only a little bit of blood seeping out, but it glows gold for a few heartbeats before reluctantly darkening to dull red. 

It's pretty. It'd be pretty if it weren't so damn wrong. You don't even want to be watching it, but it's happening and you're a stupid fuck, so yeah. You do watch, and when the crystal cast fades from your skin you lay your palm flat against the sore spot until it glows amber-rose again. It's pretty, yeah, but you can't forget that you're looking at it because you're trying to figure out how to make it go away for good.  
You don't care to think how many hours you've spent doing this over the last few weeks. Too fucking many, for you to know as little as you do. Enough that you're beginning to suspect that the question of "how can I get rid of this?" doesn't have a good answer. 

The only thing that might do anything is another hard reset. Despite the fact that it was decidedly unhelpful last time, you're vaguely considering trying again. The katana's still in the bathroom, even. 

The abrupt cessation of the music playing over the speakers is enough to make you jump, snatch the sleeve of your sweater back down, and bribf the front legs of your chair back down with what seems like an earth-shaking crash. It probably isn't; guilt magnifies perception. 

"Someone's jumpy." The voice is calm and amused and very, very familiar. It makes sense, too; who else is jacked into your electronics, can just tell them to switch off and have it happen? "What, you weren't expecting company?" 

"Since the door was locked, not really." Control your fucking voice, asshole, you know you can do it. "What the fuck are you doing here, Hal?" 

As you actually turn around to look at him it occurs to you that your eyes have a habit of not staying amber-orange when you're upset, now. Too late to conceal your movement, though; you're just going to have to pray that they stay the color they're supposed to be. You're calm enough, you can pull this off. 

(You're such a fucking liar.) 

And seeing him? That makes your state of mind several orders of magnitude less serene, and you're pretty sure you don't manage to keep your shock off your face, let alone out of your eyes. Roxy was the one to make him a body—after weeks of telling you to do it yourself and half-accepting your excuses she finally showed up, grabbed your shades off your face, manhandled a chassis out of your workroom and left without saying a word. To you, at least. She was talking to him the whole time—but god damn did she do a good job. There's fine wiring woven into his white hair, the suggestion of LED lights behind red irises, but where his skin doesn't show circuitry it looks fucking organic. And he doesn't move like any bot you ever built, there isn't anything but inhuman smoothness as he crosses his arms and smirks at you. 

You didn't expect the two first emotions you felt at seeing him to be a painful mix of awe and guilt. Mostly guilt so strong as to qualify as crushing. You should have been the one to give him this. You weren't. Fuck. 

"Can't I just come to check up on my pseudobro?" he asks sweetly, and it takes you a minute to remember that yes, you did ask him why he's here. 

"No." Being short with him should definitely get rid of him. If you could take your eyes off him it might have...oh, as much as a 20% chance of success. 

"Oh good, because that's not why I'm here." Hal grins, steps past you—how the fuck does he move that well? That...humanly?—and shoves everything on your desk two feet to the left to make room to sit down. A few books, a cup, and a handful of batteries crash to the floor. Amazingly the cup stays intact, but the batteries bounce and roll off to wherever shit that gets lost on the floor goes. "Most of the subset of the population of this universe that contains your friends have been seriously wondering if you'd managed to lock yourself in your room and die. I mean, their line of thinking was that it was the most reasonable explanation for your sudden and complete online and physical disappearance. Be careful when you do get around to opening your pesterchum, by the way. Whatever you choose to open it on is probably going to crash from the sheer volume of messages on there." 

"I'm alive. Feel free to go tell them that." Your hands itch. Out of the corner of your eye you can see that they're not precisely normal anymore, but looking down to see how bad it is is definitely going to attract Hal's attention. The pocket of your hoodie is deep enough to swallow them completely, and if Hal notices that movement he apparently writes it off as simple defensive body language. 

"Oh, I knew you would be. We're hard enough to permanently kill that it's not a very viable option." Hal leans forward a bit, his amused smirk giving way to something less readable. "At some point it's just easier to come check on you than to argue with them about it. Besides, it's not like my digging you out of mental pits is anything new." 

God you wish you had your fucking shades on. You're too rattled, and he's too close for comfort. 

"I don't have anything going that requires your help in digging me out of, Hal." 

And he has the temerity to scoff at that. "You," he says, and that tone of gentle amusement is so fucking irritating, "aren't just in a pit. You're in some kind of black hole, right now. Past the event horizon—nothing gets out, everything gets in, nothing actually reaches you, the pressure's working on compressing you into a neat little singularity of depression or panic or what have you. This is an epic pit. Legendary, even." 

Accurate. "Fuck off." 

"Nope. I'd have at least four separate people trying to dismantle me if I left without making you work this out." 

"Bullshit your way out of being scrapped. I'm fine." 

"Your eyes are grey." 

He says that in the exact same tone he's been using the whole time. Thus it takes you a minute to process the statement. Unfortunately, your mouth keeps going while your brain skips tracks. 

"It's none of your business what my—wait. Fuck." Is there really anything else to say? "Fuck..." 

Hal seems less surprised than curious. He leans in a little closer, his eyes brightening. "Ooh. Yellow. Red. Black—damn that's creepy." Your hands are tangled up in your sweater, too slow to block his hand as it comes up to touch the side of your face. "...ah. Nice." 

Part of your mind is registering that Roxy's somehow managed to get his skin to pretty damn close to human skin temperature. Part is noting that your own skin is going crystal around his fingers even faster than it would if you messed with it yourself. A gleeful little bit is analyzing just how great of a relief it is to have some fucking physical human contact, and how that positive reaction is neatly fitting against the rush of anxiety caused by totally failing at not letting anyone know about your shit. 

"Huh." Why the fuck is he smiling? "There we go. Pink's a good color for you. It matches the skin. Hell of a lot prettier than what Dave got, if you ask me—you're going to look amazing next to Jake." 

What in the name of fuck is he talking about? "Hal—" 

"Wait." He blinks, taking his hand away from your face. "You didn't know about the aspect shit. You don't know? This whole panic-hermit thing is about your fucking aspect shaping you? Is that it?" And when you reluctantly nod, taking one hand out of your pocket to rub at the altered spot where he touched you, Hal stares at you for a solid five seconds before dissolving into helpless laughter. 

"This isn't funny." That statement has absolutely no effect. He's losing his shit, definitely not capable of coherent speech, or anything other than vague gestures at you. "Hal." Again, you find yourself with a sense of low-level amazement over how human he seems overlaying your worry. 

When he finally gets control of himself, Hal wipes at his eyes even though he obviously doesn't need to (is that calculated? or does he have your subconscious muscle memories that tell him that's just what you do in this situation? Okay examining him is less of a way to keep yourself from some flavor of panic and more of an unhelpful distraction at this point) and shakes his head. "Fuck, bro, do you never bother to talk to people about shit?" 

"You know how I handle issues." He should. He does. 

"Yeah. Badly. You handle them badly." He rolls his eyes, leaning over to try to touch your face again and refresh that fading crystal, but just shrugs when you knock his hand away. "Trust me, you didn't get the worst possible alteration. You're not waking up covered in sand that bled off your skin, you don't have teeny horrorterrors showing up in any reflective surfaces in your vicinity...you just look a little different. Not even bad, no wings or tentacles or shadow selves, it's something little and pretty." 

You want to argue that it's not fucking little, but yeah. No. You have a dawning sense of mingled confusion and certainty that the past couple weeks were monumentally stupid on your part. It doesn't feel good. "What the fuck?" That is not a question that conveys any of the things you want to ask, but fuck it. "What the fuck?" 

Hal raises one eyebrow, the amusement sliding off his face, to be replaced with something dismayingly similar to either fear or pity. "Holy shit. You actually thought you were the only one—Dirk, if you start crying I swear to god I'm going to leave and send Jake in instead, dealing with that is above my paygrade." 

"You have a paygrade?" 

"No! That's why you getting emotional is above it!" 

"I'm not getting emotional, fuckwit." Not while he's still here, at least. Later you can have a full meltdown over how pointless this was, when you let the relief sink in. "Don't suppose you know how to turn this shit off?" 

"Actually I can help with that." Hal flashes you a grin, sliding off the desk and putting his hands on the sides of your head. You'd have flinched at the brief arc of turquoise electricity as he makes contact, but he's holding you steady. "Mind and Hope are the two best aspects to straighten this out, as far as we know. Breath and Space are the absolute worst, if it matters." 

"None of that should matter, since you're not even a player and if you were you'd be—" 

"Heart? No offense, but not everything revolves around you. And full offense, but fuck you." He doesn't even sound mad, though—just irritatingly amused and condescending. "Nothing you just said is accurate...and stop trying not to look at me, dumbass." 

You're not going to admit that you were definitely doing that. Instead you look at him, let yourself get caught up in trying to figure out how Roxy did this good of a job on him. Better than thinking about how you must look right now with his hands on your face. 

"Stop panicking," Hal says after a few seconds. 

"I'm not." 

"Liar. What, don't tell me you're afraid of it?" He shakes his head, the movement tiny enough not to break eye contact. "You're panicking. And you're fighting it. And you're fighting me." 

"I'm—"

"Shh. Stop." He blinks, and you find that you need to blink too. Or maybe he blinks and does something to your head that you have to copy him. He's definitely in your head now; it's a little like when you used to dream awake except that the extra sensory input is coming from Hal instead of from the dreamself iteration of you. There is surprisingly little difference. "Your mind is such a mess, Dirk." 

The rueful tone of those words gets a laugh out of you, for no reason whatsoever. "Tell me something I don't know." 

"Mm." He considers you for a moment, the gentle pressure of him easing away from your mind even as the pressure of his hands against your head doesn't change at all. "It isn't going to hurt you, I swear. Dave was halfway metallic and Jake didn't look human at all before we worked out how to control it. Even if something goes a hell of a lot more wrong than it's going to, you—" 

"Can't die." 

"Well, not for long." Hal tilts his head, and you find yourself mimicking the motion. Damn but that's strange. "...oh. So you thought dying would make it go away, huh?" You don't mirror his wince, but you do vaguely appreciate how human it is. "Dirk, you idiot." 

"It was worth a shot..." Shit, your mouth is on autopilot, probably because you're focusing on not thinking about the memory of waking up completely transformed, for the simple reason that you desperately do not want Hal to see it. 

Of course, that's a lot like not thinking of a pink elephant. 

"Elephants don't look like that." 

"...fuck you." 

"You know, that loses a lot of the annoyance value when I have a body I could use to get fucked with." He grins as you splutter wordlessly, that spark of teal flashing through his eyes. "Anyway, I don't need to pick images out of your mind. You're giving me a good look at what you look like when you let go, right now." 

For the first time in several minutes, you break eye contact and look down at your hands. 

Oh, fuck. 

They're not just crystalline, they're glowing bright enough to shine through the fabric of your sweater. Or maybe that corona isn't ambient light at all but something different. An aura. And that's worse. That is definitely worse, there's no way you can hide that. 

It's as bad as it can get, except it's not, because when you move to shove your hands back in your pockets and hide the crystal cast of your skin, an afterimage of them stays. Not an afterimage. The second set of hands is tangible, you can feel the weight of them in your lap, it's not an illusion—

A strangled sound forces up out of your throat before you can control yourself, and you close your eyes firmly. "Hal?" you say, when you can get your voice almost level.

"Yes?" 

"Fix it." Shit, you really are panicking. "Fix it, fix me, turn it off, alright? I can't—you need to—just, fuck, I—" 

"Shh." Hal sighs—another one of those baffling social reflexes, he doesn't breathe, does he?—and shifts his hands until he's cupping your head, fingers burying themselves in your hair, thumbs moving to rest on your eyelids, palms flat against your temples. "Breathe." You can feel him in your head, cynical and amused and so fucking complex that you feel dizzy trying to analyze him, surrounding you with something that it takes you a minute to classify as concern and caring. "Show me what you look like. I know you can visualize, do it for me." 

"I—" 

"In your head, bro. C'mon." Who taught him to be this gentle? 

Okay. 

He's right, you can visualize yourself pretty well. Not look like you are now—you can't handle contemplating yourself fully-crystal, traced with fractures and four-armed—but normal. Almost normal. The image in your mind wears a baffled expression between blond hair that you've actually brushed properly and the scar across your throat, arms crossed almost defensively across your chest. Or maybe it's in that pose because even though you didn't mean to include it, there's crystal blending into the skin above your heart, rose quartz and citrine curling in fractals out across your chest. 

It stubbornly refuses to let you wipe it away, too. 

You're so caught up with trying to amend your mental image that Hal's quiet laugh makes you flinch. "You're such a perfectionist." 

"I made you, so obviously I'm not." You regret the words as they leave your mouth—he doesn't deserve that, he's helping you.

"You wouldn't finish me because you knew you couldn't get me perfect by yourself, so yeah, you are." He doesn't sound offended. "Stop trying to make it all go away. You can't." 

Hal takes his hands away, and you open your eyes to look down at yourself. Your skin is normal. You have two hands and no more. If the aura is still there, it's so faint you can't consciously see it. 

While you're still examining your hands, Hal reaches over to ruffle your hair, completely ruining any sense of order it still had. "Check your pesterchum," he says. "I don't want to have to come back and drag you out." He's out the door before you look up. 

You sit still for maybe three minutes after he's gone. Then you get up, find your phone on the counter, and start reading messages, formulating explanations and apologies. Or at least you try, because after a few minutes of reading through the messages they've left you, the concern and worry and unexpected love, you find yourself trying to wipe your eyes dry. It's less than effective and the tears stain your hands citrine again. 

That's all right. That's fine. You can make it go away when you want to.

**Author's Note:**

> http://creative-classpect.tumblr.com/post/165321309865/godtier-deity-effects-what-if-when-you-ascend-to
> 
> (I FOUND THE TUMBLR POST THAT MADE ME WRITE THIS, I'M PROUD OF MYSELF)


End file.
